


When?

by inabodycastofglass



Series: Old works [11]
Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: F/M, No Dialogue, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:30:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7943047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabodycastofglass/pseuds/inabodycastofglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When had Natalia fallen in love with Asch?</p>
            </blockquote>





	When?

When was it that she fell in love with him? When was it that she looked stepped past wanting to be in love with the person she was destined to spend her live with, and truly fell in love? Because she did.

Perhaps it was when he first was kind to her. Perhaps it was the first time they spoke without fighting. They used to fight so often when they were four and five. Every time Luke would brush off one of her comments and turn and walk away from her, a fight would start. She would yell at him about manners and being a king and he would yell back that she needed to mind her own business. And then the anger would escalate until one of them swung. She could never remember afterwards which of them it was. But they would always be pulled apart by some servant that Guy had fetched, their faces split and bruised, and their skin multi-coloured, and receive a scolding from her aunty.

Or perhaps it was the first time he responded properly to her talk of marriage and spending their lives together. When she spoke of her wedding dress and he told her she would be pretty in it. She remembered her heart skipping a beat and her chest fluttering. Though he’d regretted it after when she wouldn’t shut up about the matter for weeks.

There was also the time he proposed. That one always held a special meaning in her heart. That brief moment that never seemed to end. Even now she felt as if she were eight-years-old, standing in the light of the sunset, his face half covered by darkness, growing more dim, but always glowing to her eyes. He would always be glowing in her eyes.

Or when she found out he had lost his memory. She’d clung to him so desperately. She would have given up everything for him to remember. Sometimes she even thought she would give up her throne, give up Kimlasca. Surely only love could cast those thoughts into her mind.

But the pain of seeing him again, the confusion of realizing who he was, the mistake she made, the pain she caused him, that agony was stronger than anything she had ever felt before. She couldn’t have been in love with him all those years. If she were, she’d have noticed. That could not have been the moment she fell in love with him.

It was before he died. Before Luke turned to her and told her he was gone. She knew that with no possible doubt. She knew she loved him then. It didn’t matter how long in that moment, that moment when she’d broken, her entire world crumbling into nothingness, how long she had loved him. Her entire life, or just in that moment, it didn’t matter. It only mattered that she did, that she could never reach out and touch him, that any possible hope she had for their future together that she’d still clung onto like the small child she still was whenever she saw him, was gone, dissolving like sand when she reached out to him, slipping through her fingers and blowing away, out to the sea, to be lost to her forever. Only that mattered.

Now that it was too late for it to matter.


End file.
